


a lean wind flays

by jillyfae



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, jack and the beanstalk, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/pseuds/jillyfae
Summary: The beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?Magnus and his mother and a handful of magic beans.
Relationships: Magnus Bane & Magnus Bane's Mother
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Hunter's Moon Fairy Tale Retelling





	a lean wind flays

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [what if a much of a which of a wind](https://www.best-poems.net/e-e-cummings/what-if-a-much-of-a-which-of-a-wind.html). 
> 
> Many thanks to [ruth](https://twitter.com/rutherina) & [june](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni) for the betas, and the Hunter's Moon Discord Server for giving me the push to finish this. I'm on [twitter]() & [tumblr]() for prompts, questions, comments, or yelling. (#jillyfic is the catch-all tag on twitter, if you do that sort of thing)
> 
> To the rest of you, and especially Magnus: I'm so sorry.

There were only a few truths Magnus knew for sure. They were poor. Most people were cruel. His mother loved him. 

His mother was afraid. 

Of him or for him, he wasn't sure. Perhaps both. 

Half their neighbors thought he was a changeling. The other half thought him the by-blow of some noble who’d stopped at the Inn where his mother had worked before he was born. Before a young single girl had shown up pregnant and been fired for her supposed sins. 

Magnus’ mother never talked about his father. Magnus tended to suspect the noble theory, if only because otherwise one of the curses he’d attempted to cast on the Inn over the years would have worked, right? One of his attempts to heal the cough his mother got every winter would have _worked._

But then he’d see his mother staring at him out of the corner of his eye, see her flick her gaze away as soon as he turned, and he wondered. 

Maybe he just hadn’t found the right words, the right thoughts, the right blessing or curse. Yet.

But even without curses or blessings they usually scraped by all right. They had a roof, even if the walls were thin. They weren’t starving, though they were both too familiar with _hungry_.

Until the summer the rains didn’t come, and the grass withered, and the bugs dug deep, and the chickens scratched but couldn’t find enough to eat, and the cow stopped giving milk, and his mother kept slipping all her food to Magnus, until she was thin and fragile and pale. 

They tried to sell the cow. No one would buy her.

Eventually they ate the chickens, tough and thin and stringy though they were.

And then they waited. For rain.

For starvation.

For something to change.

A trader came through town, an older man with a strange accent who never took off his hood, and Magnus decided it was worth one more try. He offered the trader their cow.

The trader offered him a handful of beans. He claimed they were magic, which was ridiculous, and Magnus rolled his eyes and turned to go.

But the man grabbed Magnus’ arm, and before Magnus could rip it away, could yell or fight or swear, he dropped the small bag in Magnus’ hand, and Magnus _could feel them._ A buzz like lightning under his skin, a warmth like fire between his bones.

He almost dropped the bag. 

The trader laughed, and reached for the cow’s reins, and Magnus let him take her away.

Magnus took the beans home, and poured them into his mother's hands, and asked if she could _feel it._

"No," she whispered, but he didn't think she meant the beans. "No, no, no." 

He reached out, tried to take them back, and she screamed, loud and shrill and wordless, and shoved the beans in her mouth. She swallowed, hard, choking and spitting, and then collapsed to the ground, her body jerking as if with a seizure, her hands clawing at the dirt, her joints cracking as if they couldn't stand the pressure. 

He _tried,_ he did, turned her on her side and ripped off his jacket to put under her head as a pillow and prayed for the first time in his life, true and honest and desperate, tried to find a blessing in his blood instead of a curse, _please,_ he thought, just this once, _just this once,_ but nothing worked. _Nothing helped._ Her lips turned blue and her eyes rolled back in her head and she died right in the middle of what had once been their garden, on top of dry cracked earth and the dead remnants of weeds and vegetables. 

Something snapped inside him, now that it was too late, and the evil he'd always suspected lived in his blood broke free; fire and heat and rage and grief. When he could pay attention again he was surrounded by flames and cinders, his mother's body nothing but ash and splinters of bone, his house a smoldering ruin, even the lean-to for the cow and the coops for the dead chickens burned away. 

Everything was gone. 

He stayed there, kneeling on the scorched earth that had been his mother's final resting place, face wet with tears and soot and snot. He stayed there as the winds picked up and the fire started to spread, catching on the dry grass and dead trees out beyond their small plot of land. He stayed. He wondered if it would spread all the way to the village, wondered if he'd taken out the Inn at last, and the farmers who'd always sneered at him as he passed.

And then it started to rain.

Heavy rain, steady and cold, enough to put out the flames, to cool the embers, to kill the wind. 

Enough to save everyone but his mother.

And him. 

He spent the night there, kneeling in the mud and ash as rain poured down, soaking his clothes, his hair, his skin, 'til he felt as slick and fragile as a soap bubble, as heavy and cold as a late spring snow.

He didn't sleep, but he wasn't really aware either, not until the air started to lighten, even through the rain, as the sun came up behind the clouds. 

He blinked down at the ground beneath his knees, the mud covering his legs, his hands, squeezed his eyes tight shut to push the water out of his lashes. He shook his head, waterlogged hair sticking to his temples and the back of his neck, his shirt clinging to his back, his toes gone numb in his shoes.

The rain was lighter now, more a mist than a downpour. 

He supposed he should move, at some point, or else accept that he never would.

He wondered how long it would take for his body to give out if he just... stayed here, like this.

He'd been hungry and tired for so long, and now, this. He didn't think it would take that long. 

He wondered what his mother had been trying to prevent, what the beans would have done, what the fire and the rain meant... 

He wondered if it meant he really was evil, somewhere deep in his blood where he'd never be able to get rid of it, or if she'd just been too afraid for too long to know what it was safe to risk.

He wondered why she couldn't love him more than she hated his father, whoever or whatever he had been.

He wondered what it made him, why it took complete and total destruction for the magic in his blood to come to life. He wondered why, when it finally happened, it was with fire. 

He rolled his head around, stretching out his neck and shoulders. It felt nice. Nice enough he maybe wanted to try more?

He lifted his head, and opened his eyes, and stopped.

His fingers dug into his thighs, and he couldn't even make himself blink, despite the water trying to drip into his eyes. 

The beans had sprouted.

And grown.

While he was kneeling right next to them, and he hadn't...

He swallowed.

They'd formed an arch, twisting vines around and around each other, up and up, then curling back down again. He could look through it, see the charred center beam of the old coop half-sticking out of the ground at an awkward angle. 

He could look _through_ it, and see somewhere else, somewhere with a blue sky and piles of white clouds and bright sunlight, dust swirling into spirals caught in the beams of light. 

The light wasn't _quite_ the right color. 

The light wasn't _his_ light, wasn't his world.

But could it be?

_Why not?_

There was nothing left for him here, no one left he'd miss, not really.

He made himself stand, slow and painful. 

He took a step forward, unsteady from stiff muscles, from the slick slide of wet ash and mud beneath his feet. He wondered for once, about what _might_ be, what might be different _,_ what might be _better_ , if he got a second chance. He wondered, and it didn't hurt.

He took another step, and another, and let his new-found power flare as he walked _through,_ so no one and nothing would ever think to follow him.

He smiled, and the arch flared up behind him, fire so hot it was blue and white, sparks flying for the length of a heart-beat, maybe two, before settling down into the ash, disappearing just as completely as he had.


End file.
